Review - Selling Out by Zen DiPietro

To most people on Dragonfire Station, Cabot Layne is a simple, friendly shopkeeper, selling trinkets and other things of interest to the different species flowing off the many ships calling on the station. A few know that Cabot is a much more skilled trader than he lets on, with the connections to acquire almost anything one could want, even if it’s not quite legal. So, when a rogue coalition at the edge of planetary alliance space starts to threaten the peace, Security Chief Fallon calls on Cabot to make the deal of a life-time by negotiating a special pact with the reptilian Briven.

“Selling Out” is set in the universe of the Dragonfire Station series, and picks up more or less where the series left off. However, this book involves characters that were mostly peripheral to the Dragonfire stories, so this could be read without having read the original series.

Cabot was certainly an interesting character from the series, so it’s easy to see why he deserves his own story, or series even. The team he puts together for his mission is also rather interesting, and mostly new characters as well. Each of them gets well developed and have their own surprises in store as the story progresses.

This is a ‘nice’ read. It has all the detail and readability of the original series, but it just didn’t click for me. It’s hard to put my finger on the issue, but I think it’s the linearity of the story line. The plot goes more or less in a straight line from beginning to end, without any of the sub-plots or mysteries of the Dragonfire books. There are some interesting relationships between the main characters, but without the complexities that Fallon had with her team. Perhaps the next book in the series will offer a story with a little more meat.

“Selling Out” is available from Amazon.